Faith of the Candidates

The editors of Episcopal Churchnews asked the major presidential candidates for a summary of their religious views, this week printed their answers. Excerpts:

Dwight Eisenhower, Protestant with no denominational affiliation: "You can't explain free government in any other terms than religious. The founding fathers had to refer to the Creator in order to make their revolutionary experiment make sense; it was because 'all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights' that men could dare to be free.

"During the war I made the most agonizing decision of my life. I had to postpone by at least 24 hours the most formidable array of fighting ships and of fighting men that was ever launched across the sea against a hostile shore . . . This is what I found out about religion: it gives you courage to make the decisions you must make in a crisis, and then the confidence to leave the result to higher power. Only by trust in oneself and trust in God can a man carrying responsibility find repose."

Adlai Stevenson, Unitarian: "Religious faith remains, in my opinion, our greatest national resource ... It is our protection against the moral confusion, which is too often the moral nihilism, of this age. The blight of moral relativism has not fallen destructively upon us ... The mass of our people expect of their public servants probity and decisive distinction between right and wrong in the discharge of their public responsibilities.

"The burdens attached to the office of President of the United States are enormous. I know that those responsibilites are so far beyond the limits of human wisdom and strength that, if I am called upon to bear them, I should be utterly dependent on the sustaining power of God as the source of truth and of wisdom in the endless hours of uncertainty and anxiety."

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